Modeling of wave propagation in drill strings using vibration transfer matrix methods

In order to understand critical vibration of a drill bit such as stick-slip and bit-bounce and their wave propagation characteristics through a drill string system, it is critical to model the torsional, longitudinal, and flexural waves generated by the drill bit vibration. Here, a modeling method based on a vibration transfer matrix between two sets of structural wave variables at the ends of a constant cross-sectional, hollow, circular pipe is proposed. For a drill string system with multiple pipe sections, the total vibration transfer matrix is calculated by multiplying all individual matrices, each is obtained for an individual pipe section. Since drill string systems are typically extremely long, conventional numerical analysis methods such as a finite element method (FEM) require a large number of meshes, which makes it computationally inefficient to analyze these drill string systems numerically. The proposed “analytical” vibration transfer matrix method requires significantly low computational resources. For the validation of the proposed method, experimental and numerical data are obtained from laboratory experiments and FEM analyses conducted by using a commercial FEM package, ANSYS. It is shown that the modeling results obtained by using the proposed method are well matched with the experimental and numerical results.